I’m sorry, but there’s simply no way Mark Millar could open his return to the Ultimate Universe with Nick Fury saying “What the %@#&? I disappear for ten minutes and the whole place goes to hell” without intending it as autobiography. After essentially establishing the superheroes-as-paramilitary-unit tone that mainstream comics–certainly Marvel Comics–would have for the decade in The Ultimates, Millar left the franchise in the hands of Jeph Loeb for two arcs, the first of which sold pretty good but made Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen look like Chinatown and had little if anything in common with the vibe and characterizations established by Millar, and the second of which never even came out. Instead, Loeb destroyed Manhattan in the event miniseries Ultimatum, then decamped for more buoyantly awful comic-making in the main Marvel line, leaving Millar and his fellow Ultimate-line pioneer Brian Bendis to pick up the pieces.

Of course, since establishing the Ultimate Universe, Millar and Bendis (who never left, though his Ultimate Spider-Man series has had arguably the lowest profile of any of his books over the past couple years) have been given free rein over the Marvel Universe proper, which as I’ve said before is probably a big reason why the Ultimate books lost their unique luster. So I imagine it’s a matter of pride for the pair to return to their rebooted books guns blazing, proving that what they can do here, they can’t do anyplace else.

Mission accomplished to an almost alarming degree, if you ask me. Ultimate Comics Avengers #1–retitled to capitalize on the still-stunning-to-me popularity of the main-line Marvel team upon which the book is based, said popularity owing to Bendis’s revamp of it and soon to lead to movie megastardom–reads like Millar is intent on doing everything he does best. So you have some of his irksome tics, like unnecessary commas between adjectives and Tony Stark holding forth while drunk and surrounded by strippers, but you also have the kind of rock-solid widescreen action that you’d think a decade of aping Hollywood blockbusters would have made more superhero writers better at by now. Honestly, Millar is aided immeasurably by the real star of the issue, Carlos Pacheco. I’ve long thought Pacheco could be a truly ideal superhero-slugfest artist–his layouts are dynamic and when he keeps them on-model, his squarejawed superheroes look like they’re just dying to pound the shit out of someone. Here, that’s exactly what they do, as Captain America gets his ass handed to him in midair by the Red Skull in panels so full-bleed they look like the edges were deliberately cropped–like the pages can’t handle combat this two-fisted. Pacheco did yeoman’s work as a Final Crisis fill-in, and he’s looked beautiful colored by Dave Stewart in Kurt Busiek collaborations like Arrowsmith and Superman, but this is so much better than anything I’ve seen from him before. It’s like the detail of Bryan Hitch combined with the oomph of John Romita Jr. It was gonna take a lot to get me back aboard the Ultimates bandwagon after Loeb, not to mention Millar’s own lackluster “second season” of the series, but hey how about this, I’m in. Amid all the superhero comics I’m reading because of their imaginative concepts or clever execution, surely there’s room for the equivalent of Invasion U.S.A..

Bendis didn’t have as tough an act to follow–he’s been writing Ultimate Spider-Man non-stop for, what, nine years, and his recent work with Stuart Immonen has been quite strong. But there’s always a risk of diminishing returns, and those did set in for a while in the late-double-digit issues. Plus, there was all that uncertainty over whether or not Ultimate Spidey would actually live be the star of his own book post-Ultimatum, though in the end his survival ended up revealed in a weird pair of “Requiem” issues that read more like a framing sequence surrounding inventory stories they needed to burn off. And no, this reboot issue isn’t entirely free of residual Ultimatum ickiness–it’s nice that the line has the freedom to kill everyone in Manhattan, but this isn’t the kind of franchise where the characters can adequately process a trauma of that magnitude or where the societal and economic ramifications of destroying the most important city on the planet can even be touched on, not by a longshot.

But that aside, this is prime Ultimate Spidey. And again, it’s a new artistic collaborator who really makes it shine. David LaFuente feels like a bionic Stuart Immonen–the character models are similar, particularly Peter Parker’s increasingly preposterous hair, but everything’s slicker, younger, shinier, at times looking like anime (not manga, anime). I’m not sure who’s responsible for the overall look, LaFuente or colorist Justin Ponsor, but I could really get used to it. There’s a moonlit make-out scene with a lovely looking Gwen Stacy that’s absolutely sumptuous. There’s a great opening splash page that twists into some comic business at a fast-food joint, there’s a USM-trademark scene where Spidey shows up late to a fight, and after yet another ludicrous explanation for how well-known murderer the Kingpin can come back to New York and carry on business-as-usual, someone kills him. (I hope it sticks!) I was entertained throughout and surprised at the end. Keep it coming.

Millar totally copped to the first pages being his jab at bad Ultimate books without naming anyone specifically.

It was a weird experience reading this issue after having covered the launch so much. I knew the twist at the end about the villain (hell, he told everyone the plot of the first two issues at the panel in Chicago this weekend). So all the basic dramatic tension was let out of the whole thing, and all I had to get me into the proceedings was Millar and Pacheco’s storytelling, which as you said on the former’s part includes the usual, “Too cool for school” posturing followed by widescreen action and window smashing. Done as well as Millar ever does it, but not the most compelling hook on its own.

And I was a little put off by the weight of Pacheco’s art. Without Meriano inking him, his line is a lot lighter and the fact that the big action piece was largely in the air with no background detail to make some more contrast on the page (that use of negative space on the splash where Hawkeye was jumping at the copter or whatever seemed off too). I don’t know. The storytelling was largely all right, and that’s what’s important, but the final product felt a little…rushed?

Not a home run for me, but I’m sure there are some fun PG-13 action comics to be had from the book in the future.

Everything I Do

Hi! My name is Sean T. Collins and I am a writer. Here are links to basically every place on the internet where you can find what I do. A site for everything and everything on its site, that’s my motto. Non-tumblrs up top, tumblrs down below.

All Leather Must Be Boiled: News and views on George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire and its television adaptation Game of Thrones, located at boiledleather.com. Home of the Boiled Leather Audio Hour podcast, co-hosted by Stefan Sasse. Of all my tumblrs this is where you’ll find the widest range of posts, as I often rope in pretty much anything I’m thinking and writing about television, fiction, fantasy, genre storytelling, politics, whatever. Beneath the gold, the bitter steel.

The True Black: Comics written by me and drawn by a host of talented collaborators. Also contains news of upcoming comics projects.

Bowie Loves Beyoncé: You can’t say no to the beauty and the beast, darling. Images of two of the best human beings and popular musicians, David Bowie and Beyoncé Knowles-Carter. This was my first tumblr, so it’s what shows up when I like your posts.

Fuck Yeah, T-Shirts: No man with a good t-shirt needs to be justified. Good pictures of our greatest garment.

Superheroes Lose: Superhero publishers love putting pictures of their superheroes losing on the covers of their comics. I love putting them on this tumblr. When we imagine people who can do anything, this is what we imagine.

Badge: Stories of police brutality, overkill, and overreach in the United States of America, reblogged from around the internet with minimal comment. Before they bring the curtain down.

The Deep Ones: There’s something in the water. Sea monsters real, extinct, and imaginary. Co-founded and co-curated by me and Julia Gfrörer.

The Devil in Love: A man of wealth and taste. Images of the infernal with undeniable aesthetic and/or erotic appeal. Founded by Julia, co-curated by me.

Homage to Catalonia: Images of churches on fire or in ruins as a means by which to contemplate the positive and negative energy generated by the buildings and realized in the flames. Founded by me, co-curated by Julia.

Comics Democracy: Comics with over 10,000 notes on tumblr, found while tumbling and reblogged without comment. I will show you a world without gatekeepers.

Cool Practice: What I wanted to be and how I wanted to be it, one song at a time. Thoughts on music and its intersection with “coolness.”

Sean T. Collins on Comics: A repository for writing about comics (mostly comics on the web, mostly alternative-genre comics at that) for my former day job, this tumblr will also sometimes reblog writing-about-comics I’ve done elsewhere.

Sean T. Collins on Culture: The twin of seantcomics, this tumblr houses my old dayjob writing on genre culture that influenced me as a kid. Who knows what I’ll get up to with it eventually?

The Boiled Leather Audio Hour: A dedicated tumblr for my ASoIaF/GoT podcast, created for iTunes syndication purposes, but hey, you can follow it if you want.

In addition, I created several one-off tumblrs to host individual webcomics written by me and drawn by other people. I plan to reblog all of them to The True Black eventually, but here they are in their native habitats: